From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jan 20 2003 - 18:53:59 MST
--- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >(Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>):
> >>
> >>War is bad.
> >
> > Well, yes, death is bad. And war, which involves lots of death, is
> > very bad. But there are worse things, like suffering and slavery.
> > And there are times when the application of deadly violence /saves/
> > lives. Avoiding war is a noble sentiment. But avoiding a war that
> > is needed to free an enslaved people, or avoiding a war that is
> > needed to stop a genocide or a conquest, is elevating the sentiment
> > above reason. And the idea that war is never necessary to do those
> > things is not rationally supportable.
>
> Yes, that's why when Bush said he was not interested in
> nation-building,
> he lost any chance of my sympathy. The Marshall Plan is one of the
> few cases I can think of where war worked historically. I'd still be
> very nervous around war just on general principles, but at least it's
> something
> where, a few past times in history, there was a positive result.
> There'd be a *hope* of it being for the best.
So, Eli, you are in favor of carpet bombing Iraq into the stone age to
make a clean slate for a new Marshall Plan to build on top of?
I might also point out that your cause and effect is a bit out of
whack. As I recall, the Marshall Plan was a postwar policy enacted only
in the face of communist insurgency and propaganda in western Europe.
Marshall, being a wartime ground pounding general, had no time to put
his plan together while in boots. It was not until he was a civilian in
the postwar Truman Administration that he put his plan together.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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